How To Host A Webcast On A Server Farm

Transcription

1 Sector update Web Hosting Spring 2015 Technology, Media & Telecoms Consolidation in the hosting industry is set to continue as strong market growth and the need to offer scale, innovation and an international presence drives deal activity. Hosting companies and high profile telecom players will be active buyers in the next few years, with the latter looking to make important strategic acquisitions in order to break into new, high growth markets. PE is also expected to continue to execute a number of large hosting transactions, paying attractive multiples whilst doing so. Jamie Hope Partner Head of TMT Strong growth and high margins driving consolidation in $50 billion web hosting market The hosting industry has experienced strong growth in recent years and is currently valued at more than $50 billion. Robust growth looks set to continue across all major hosting subsectors over the next few years. Further consolidation is anticipated during this time as larger market participants continue to pursue acquisition opportunities. High profile hosting and telecom players are likely to drive future sector growth and consolidation as they look to penetrate new market segments and innovations. Private equity (PE) firms are also active in the sector, offering attractive valuations due to hosting companies recurring revenue, high margins and expansion potential. This presents exciting opportunities for sellers. Indeed, smaller hosting players are advised to either build more scale or consider selling their businesses to larger companies given current market dynamics. Key conclusions from this report include: Size and global presence are needed to attract large customers and/or build a strong brand. Creating more scale and improving buyers offerings are key motivations for acquisitions. Innovation is key to attracting and retaining customers in private Cloud infrastructures. There is a clear link between the size of the target and the multiple a buyer is willing to pay for that target. PE firms generally execute larger transactions and also tend to pay higher multiples for these transactions.

2 Growing market The global internet data centre market was worth $50 billion in 2014 and is forecast to increase at 17% per annum over the next two years (see Figure 1). Significant growth in the infrastructure as a service ( IaaS )/Cloud space in particular is expected during this time. Hosting segments The hosting industry includes co-location services, domain name services and website hosting, desktop hosting, dedicated hosting and cloud providers. Co-location services Companies active in the co-location services area provide pure data centre services (such as space, cooling, power and connectivity). Leaders in this space include Equinix, Digital Realty Trust, Interxion and Telecity. Co-location activities are capital intensive and should be regarded as a separate class of real estate rather than technology providers. As a result, this segment is not explored in any detail in this report. Domain name services and website hosting Companies that focus on website hosting such as Endurance, GoDaddy, 1&1 and Web.com target the consumer and small and medium enterprises (SME) markets. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are revenue per subscriber, subscriber acquisition costs and churn. In order to survive in this particular segment, complete automation of the back-office is required and economies of scale are needed in order to mitigate price pressures and increasing customer acquisition costs. Players such as Endurance and 1&1 have therefore fully focused their KPIs towards more telecom-related metrics. In order to be able to control the running costs of these operations, the back-end infrastructures are often based on deploying private or public Cloud solutions. Acquisitions are typically motivated by the need to acquire more scale (for example, buying subscriber bases). The developed technologies of the target are often fully integrated into the technology of the buyer to gain cost synergies. Service desks and overheads are also likely to be fully integrated into the buyer. As the target frequently generates relatively cheap (branded) traffic, its brand often continues to exist. Figure 1: Global internet data centre market Web & App hosting Managed hosting IaaS/Cloud Source: 451 Research Table 1: Go Daddy offering enhancement aquisitions Date Target Core business Aug-14 Mad Mimi marketing services Oct-13 Ronin Online invoicing services Sep-13 Afternic Specialist in aftermarket domain sales Aug-13 Locu Data sharing and promotion with other services via Locu s platform Feb-13 m.dot Mobile website design tool Jul-12 Outright Simple business management applications

3 One of the leaders in this segment is GoDaddy. Unlike many other companies, GoDaddy has a clear strategy of acquiring additional technologies and services for its customer base. This was GoDaddy s motivation in acquiring the six companies listed in Table 1. Desktop hosting The traditional desktop business in the IT industry was based on hardware sales and software installations. Services around the desktop were often executed locally, using specialised firms that would visit customers to handle issues. Over time, more online deployment and remote management has been introduced and, with the emergence of virtualisation, the functional desktop has been placed on servers (either inhouse or at third-party data centres). The virtualisation trend has benefitted companies such as VMware, which is now one of the leading providers of Cloud technologies. Growth in the desktop hosting space has accelerated over the past few years due to solutions such as Google Apps for Work and, more recently, Microsoft s successful Office 365. Although both companies offer a Cloud-based solution, their desktop offerings are generally sufficient for the average white-collar employee. Specialist desktop hosting providers are needed in circumstances where more dedicated remote solutions are required (for example, accounting or applications for a specific industry). Such providers often offer a wide variety of (smaller) specific applications and are capable of running these remotely and in parallel with other remote applications. Desktop hosting is often combined with the dedicated hosting offering. Dedicated hosting Dedicated hosting typically involves more complex software solutions that have been built specifically for individual customers. A large proportion of such solutions run within customer premises. The remainder run within the data centres of large system integrators (such as Accenture, Atos, Cap Gemini, HP and IBM) or are managed by specific dedicated hosting specialists. The latter usually focus on the uptime of the technical infrastructure or basic services (including databases and enterprise resource planning systems) whereas system integrators also provide functional management of the applications that are being hosted. Traditionally, digital marketing firms (such as Publicis LBi) would not only develop multi-channel solutions for their clients but would also typically host these solutions. This has changed over the last decade, however, as a number of these marketing firms have transferred hosting responsibilities to specialised dedicated hosting providers or, more recently, developed public or private Cloud environments. Dedicated hosting is executed using multiple year contracts in a managed service offering using Service Level Agreements. The hosting provider must warrant specific uptime guarantees and/ or response times. Size and scale are crucial elements to managed hosting as customers often rely on the software solution that is hosted by the provider. There are various quality standards that need to be adhered to when servicing a large customer base. Such standards require certain thresholds (often measured by organisations revenue) and are therefore difficult to achieve for smaller companies. In addition, many dedicated hosting providers and most of the larger

4 system integrators have deployed public, private or hybrid Cloud solutions that allow customers to migrate from dedicated infrastructures towards scalable Cloud infrastructures. Profit margins at dedicated hosting companies generally rise with the size of the organisation, in part due to better efficiency ratios within larger organisations. For example, the expertise of an Oracle database analyst can be deployed more efficiently if multiple customers require such a service. Acquisition strategies for dedicated hosting companies are often driven by the desire to increase economies of scale. Another objective is acquiring technology to customise offerings for specific customer verticals. In addition, as well as extracting cost synergies in the finance and human resources departments, further headcount efficiencies can be achieved if the acquiring company already has similar specialists in-house. The brand name of the target is of lesser importance and will often be phased out. The key issue in acquiring dedicated hosting companies is the quality of the customer base. Cloud providers Cloud hosting services provide hosting on virtual servers, which pull their computing resource from extensive underlying networks of physical web servers (see Figure 2 for a selection of high profile players in the Cloud providers space). It follows the utility model of computing in that it is available as a service rather than a product and is therefore comparable with traditional utilities such as electricity and gas. Broadly speaking, customers can tap into the service as much as they need, depending on their demands, so they only pay for what they use. Cloud services provide strong benefits over traditional hosting. Traditional hosting solutions require customers either to buy or lease the equipment they need to operate their software. Such infrastructures are often set up to cope with maximum usage and require more capital expenditure as more servers are required. In a downturn situation, these servers have already been bought and the infrastructure often becomes expensive. Practical examples of Cloud hosting can fall under both the IaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS) classifications. IaaS offers clients virtualised hardware resources on which they can install their Figure 2: Examples of high profile cloud providers DevOps: Cloud-native ITOps: Cloud-immigrant Cloud aggregator/multi-cloud Source: IDC

5 own choice of software environment before building their web application. For PaaS services, meanwhile, this software environment is provided (for example, as a solution stack that includes an operating system, database support, web server software and programming support), meaning customers can proceed immediately to installing and developing their web application. More obvious examples of Cloud hosting involve the use of public Cloud models hosting websites on virtual servers that pull resources from the same pool as other publicly available virtual servers and use the same public networks to transmit data. This data is physically stored on underlying shared servers, which form the Cloud resource. Public Clouds include some security measures to ensure that data is kept private and these measures are likely to suffice for most website installations. However, for businesses where security and privacy is a priority, private Clouds are a popular alternative given ringfenced resources are used for servers and networks, whether located onsite or with the Cloud provider. Hosting companies customers are increasingly moving towards using IT solutions that run on public and private Cloud infrastructures. Older infrastructures will be phased out as they are typically difficult to migrate. Companies that transition to newer infrastructures may outsource the old infrastructure to a dedicated hosting provider. That said, despite the obvious strengths of Clouds, they still only focus on one particular type of application. A significant amount of IT workload remains unsuitable for Cloud solutions offered by Microsoft Azure and Amazon, for example. Opportunities therefore remain for service providers to differentiate their infrastructure, although this is becoming more difficult. The challenges and opportunities facing Cloud companies are depicted in Figure 3, which shows different vendors in the marketplace and provides an evaluation of the strengths and capabilities of each. Those categorised as Leaders have proven staying power in the market, the ability to innovate and are capable of fulfilling enterprise needs. These companies have the scale and expertise to exploit market opportunities whilst those in the Niche and Challengers quadrants are likely to be challenged by their focus on small, segmented markets and limited understanding of the market direction. Figure 3: Magic quadrant for cloud-enabled managed hopsting, Europe 2014 Challengers Leaders Attenda IBM AT&T NTT Communications Rackspace Interoute Colt Claranet Verizon CenturyLink BT Global Services Ability to execute Telefonica Easynet SFR Fujitsu Vodafone Niche Players Completeness of vision Source: Gartner Sungard Availability Services Visionaries As of July 2014

6 Acquisitions A number of prominent hosting companies operate across the five segments explored in this report. Several have made acquisitions since 2010, particularly Claranet, Endurance and Iomart with eight purchases each (see Table 2). Telecom companies and PE firms have also been active in the hosting M&A market during this time. As Figure 4 shows, deal activity continues to run at a strong pace, with strategic transactions making up the majority of activity from 2012 onwards. Figure 4: Number of hosting deals to Strategic PE, deal announcements & annual reports of various buyers Table 2: Prominent hosting companies operations and activity Country Company Revenue ($m) EBITDA ($m) Acquisitions Webhosting Desktop hosting Dedicated/Managed Cloud offering Co-location Other Other services services Private equity Part of US Rackspace 1, X Public Germany 1&1 1, X X United Internet US GoDaddy 1, X KKR, Silver Lake, TCV Filed for IPO US Web.com X Public US Endurance X Public UK Interoute X X France OVH X X X US Internap X X X X Public UK Host Europe X X Cinven UK Claranet X X X X X Abry Partners Germany Strato X Deutsche Telecom Canada Peer1 Hosting X X X Cogeco Cable Italy Dada X X X Public Netherlands Leaseweb X X X Ocom UK Iomart X X X X Public France Cheops Technology 77-3 X X X Netherlands Schuberg Philis X X UK Pulsant X X X Oak Hill Partners Norway Basefarm X X Abry Partners US Carpathia 61-0 X X US Hostway X Little John & Co France Arsys 55 8 X X United Internet UK Adapt Group 51 5 Lyceam Group France Adista X X X X X Family-owned For the purposes of this report, we have focused on large US and European hosting deals.

7 Private equity deals As already mentioned, the hosting industry has attracted investments from several PE firms due to hosting companies recurring revenue, high margins and expansion potential (see Table 3). In particular, larger hosting providers with revenues of more than $10 million are attracting approaches by PE players. There is more of a reluctance on the part of PE groups to target hosting companies with revenues of less than $10 million given they are often required to make significant one-off overhead investments when revenues rise above this amount. Valuations offered by PE firms are typically attractive, driven in part by the relative ease in acquiring bank financing for such deals in today s market. Sellers often forget that PE firms deal structures can be complex and selling shareholders often have to provide part of the acquisition financing via vendor loans or preferred equity. Table 3: Selection of UK private equity backed acquisitions Telecom deals Telecom companies are also active acquirers in the hosting market, targeting a number of large hosting businesses since 2009 (see Table 4). Indeed, the telecom industry is at a crossroad as traditional high margin products such as voice and SMS have evaporated and new services including mobile broadband, the Cloud, information and communications technology (ICT) services, machineto-machine (M2M), social media and m-advertising will determine the future market landscape. Significant investment in the hosting space has therefore occurred and telecom companies are likely to be key players in future sector consolidation. Most telecom companies prefer the domain name segment, and web hosting in particular, due to the similarities with their own business models. Date Acquirer Country Target Country Jul-14 Vitruvian UK ASP4All Netherlands Jul-13 Cinven UK Host Europe Germany May-13 LDC UK Node4 UK Nov-11 Oakley UK Intergenia Germany Oct-11 Livingbridge UK Onyx UK Sep-11 Lyceum Capital UK Adapt Group UK Sep-11 HGCapital UK Netnames Group UK Aug-11 Darwin PE UK Attenda UK Apr-11 LDC UK UK2 UK Apr-11 LDC UK UK Group UK Nov-10 Bridgepoint UK Pulsant UK Sep-10 Montagu UK Host Europe Germany Mar-10 Scottish Equity Partners UK Control Circle UK The market as a whole is going to have quite a transformation over the next year or two. Hosting companies that really put their bet in asset-heavy builds in data centres and infrastructure are going to really struggle. They will either have to get acquired by one of the Big Three (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud), or they ll end up having to fairly drastically change their company direction. And they ll find that hard because if they ve got 15 years of data centre that they ve got to write off, that s not something that can be financially done very easily. There s going to be a lot of consolidation and acquisitions happening over the next couple of years. Martin Saunders Corporate Development Director, Claranet Table 4: Selection of deals involving telecom companies and hosting targets Date Acquirer Country Target Country Jan-15 Orange France Cloutwatt France Aug-14 KPN Netherlands Argeweb Netherlands Dec-12 Cogeco Canada Peer1 Hosting Canada Jun-11 Telefonica Spain Acens Spain Feb-11 Time Warner Cable US Navisite US Jan-11 Verizon US Terremark US Nov-09 Deutsche Telecom Germany Strato AG Germany

8 Valuation of acquisitions Hosting deals Acquisition activity between peer hosting companies has also been a key driver of consolidation activity as buyers seek to realise economies of scale, improve offerings and achieve international expansion. The market remains highly fragmented with more consolidation expected in the coming months and years. This is also due to the fact that the Cloud is still an emerging market in many parts of the world and therefore has significant untapped potential. Valuation of acquistions 60% 60% In order to determine average valuations 40% paid by acquirers between 2010 and 2014, we analysed over 100 hosting 33% 20% deals and segmented these transactions by size (using revenue and EBITDA 0% ranges). As Figure 5 Ella s shows, Kitchen there Tyrrells is a clear link between the size of the target and the multiple a buyer is willing to pay for that target. Motivations behind aquisitions When assessing non-pe transactions only, it is clear motivations for acquisitions include improving buyers offerings (for example, the purchase of a Cloud hosting firm by a managed hosting firm) or simply creating more scale. International expansion is also a factor, albeit to a lesser extent. Splitting the acquisitions between those carried out by PE firms and strategic buyers, it is evident PE firms generally execute larger transactions and also tend to pay higher multiples for these deals (see Table 6). Table 6: Average deal multiples paid by strategic and PE Buyers 25% 18% EV/REV16% EV/ EBITDA Innocent PE Soreen Fiddes 2.5 Payne10.6Bottlegreen 90.2Wilkin & Sons Limited Strategic (Tiptree) 14% Size* Listed companies % Table 5: Selection of acquisitions - hosting companies acquiring sector peers Date Acquirer Target Oct-13 Go Daddy Media Temple Oct-13 Host Europe (Germany) Telefonica Germany Online Services Sep-13 Iomart Group Redstation Ltd Sep-13 Endurance (US) Directi (India) Dec-12 Claranet Typhon SAS Aug-12 Iomart Group Melbourne Server Hosting Aug-12 Iomart Group Skymarket Jun-12 Endurance International Host Gator Apr-12 Adapt Services elinia Webservices Figure 5: Average revenue and average EBITDA multiple by size of target 14.0x 12.0x 10.0x 8.0x 6.0x 4.0x 2.0x 0.0x < 10m 10m- 20m 20m- 50m m 100m- 150m > 150m Average revenue multiple by size of target Average EBITDA by size of target Jan-12 Host Europe Red Coruna Oct-11 Hosting.com Neospire Aug-11 Host Europe Heart Internet Mar-11 Host Europe DN (Switzerland)

9 Future M&A prospects Future M&A Prospects The hosting sector is likely to remain an active M&A market in the coming months and years. The sector is highly fragmented and large, strategic buyers are likely to look to consolidate their market position by continuing with their acquisition strategies. Ultimately, the end-game is in the hands of large telecom providers that have aquired the largest players in the industry over the past few years. Contact us If you would like to discuss this report in more detail or the opportunities for your business, call +44 (0) Jamie Hope Partner Richard Sanders Partner Ron Belt Managing Partner Jamie has over 18 years corporate finance experience. His particular focus is advising owners and management teams of high-growth businesses on private equity, growth capital and trade sale transactions. Jamie also leads Catalyst s TMT sector team. Recent deals include the sales of HD Decisions and LBM Direct Marketing, and the management buy-outs of Wellbeing Software Group and Red Box Recorders. Richard has over 25 years of corporate finance advisory experience. He has led over 75 transactions, advising private company shareholders on trade sales and private equity investments. Recent transactions include the sale of Powwownow, the initial acquisitions and follow-on growth capital investments for Inspired Thinking Group, and the management buy-out of the NEC Group. Ron started his career at ABN AMRO specialising in IPOs and M&A of technology companies before becoming an independent corporate finance advisor and a venture capitalist. In 2002, he joined Catalyst s Dutch partner firm. Recent deals include the acquisition of RDC Xtended and the strategic investment in ASP4all Bitbrains by Vitruvian PE (UK). Ron is also a board member at NetMediaEurope - TMT news and Unet - Managed VOIP.

10 Selected Technology sector deals Merged with Partly sold to Acquired Acquired Smart advice Global reach Catalyst advises business owners and management teams on: Company sales Management buy-outs and buy-ins Company acquisitions Raising private equity capital Raising and refinancing debt capital Our international partnership is present in 50 cities worldwide and provides: Access to overseas buyers Identification of overseas targets and acquisition execution International M&A research Local insight into M&A culture and likely tactics London Birmingham Nottingham 5th Floor Grosvenor Gardens London SW1W 0DH 16th Floor, Bank House 8 Cherry Street Birmingham B2 5AL 21 The Triangle ng2 Business Park Nottingham NG2 1AE T +44 (0) T +44 (0) T +44 (0) Catalyst Corporate Finance LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England & Wales (registered number OC306421) Registered Office: Bank House, 8 Cherry Street, Birmingham, B2 5AL Catalyst Corporate Finance LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (number )